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Politics : A Neutral Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (245)	9/19/2005 9:51:20 AM
From: Constant Reader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2253

Good for you. I might write him and ask how replacing Rehnquist with Roberts accomplishes this: It seems not to occur to anyone that it might be an unhealthy thing, in an electorate split virtually down the red-blue middle in the past two elections, to drive the Supreme Court definitively toward one side.

To: Lane3 who wrote (245)	9/21/2005 6:08:24 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 2253

I can't really agree with a lot of what Raspberry has to say. I don't mean that anyone in authority said, in effect, those poor slobs are black and poor, so let's take our time. What is more likely is that officials were content to go by the book, to jockey for power, to wait for official authorization, to call in sick -- to act as bureaucrats -- precisely to the extent that they saw the victims as "others" rather than as full-fledged members of their community. Perhaps this was a factor, but if so I think it would be a very small one, probably so small as to not be significant. I think that all the "by the book" actions and the "waiting for authorization", and the "jockeying for power" (to the extent that such jockeying occurred) are just normal bureaucracy in action. I don't think that for the most part they were motivated by or allowed to happen because of even subconscious feelings of the victims as being "others", and not members of the community. It's no libel on John Roberts to say his nomination is divisive. I guess its not really a libel, but I also don't think its particularly accurate, except to the extent that anyone being nominated to the court would be divisive at this time. to drive the Supreme Court definitively toward one side. If that was something that was actually likely to happen as a result of this nomination then he might have something of a point, but it appears to me that he does not. A Halliburton subsidiary that already has been criticized for its reconstruction work in Iraq has landed a fat contract to do repair work at Gulf Coast Navy and Marine facilities damaged by Katrina. 'Tis an ill wind He doesn't do too much to develop an argument that Halliburton getting a contract is a bad idea. He seems to just assume that as fact. All he does is mention that it "has been criticized" and alludes to the fact that the people running the company are "pals" of people in the administration. There aren't a lot of companies that can handle big contracts in this area. If he wants to say the contract is just a case of corruption and cronyism, then he should just come out and say so. The idea -- fortunately not yet the prevailing one -- seems to be that the poor would stay where they've been temporarily relocated. In many cases that it what will happen. I don't really see it as being such a bad thing. I wouldn't support forcing them to permanently relocate, but by the time their old neighborhoods are decent places to live (and some of them might never be, and perhaps where not formerly decent places to live) many of them will have put down roots in new locations. Tim